


Invasion of the Fire-Tasters

by Katsala



Series: Forces of Nature [1]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adultery, Alien Invasion, American Companion, Fifteenth Doctor - Freeform, Gen, Infidelity, Japanese-American Character, Morse Code, Running, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26906704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katsala/pseuds/Katsala
Summary: It’s 1997 Washington DC. There’s a rash of spontaneous human combustion and a strange blinking star has appeared in the sky. It’s up to a new Doctor, with help from political intern Candice Yamada, to save the day.
Series: Forces of Nature [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1967434
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Invasion of the Fire-Tasters

**Author's Note:**

> Edited as of 10/24/20 for tags
> 
> Edited as of 12/12/20 for clarity

The year is 1997; it’s an achingly hot night in the suburbs of DC and thoughts whizz through Candice Yamada’s head like fireworks. She lays down on the picnic table in her backyard, her cocktail dress clinging to her figure and her wrap spread around her in gentle waves of fabric, and tries to burn the memories of today into her brain. 

Scott, leaning over her desk at work to check her paperwork and secretively breathing in the scent of her hair. Scott, picking her up after dark in his car, wedding band absent from his finger. High-class bars with pool tables that give her a chance to stare at Scott’s ass. One single kiss in the back of his car, his lips tasting faintly of a single shot of whiskey, before he’s gone like a whirlwind and she’s standing in an expensive dress in an empty parking lot. 

When Candice Yamada was younger, she dreamed of a handsome man who would come and take her away. Then she grew up and got it and learned better.

Candice opens her eyes with a sigh. She stares up at the stars, reaches up with one hand to drag her fingers through the night sky. 

One star in particular catches her attention; it was blinking. It was just a little prick of light nestled under Sirius, flashing away. There was something odd about it…

Candice shakes her head. It’s late; she obviously needs some sleep. She slides off the picnic table and drags herself back inside her and her roommate’s half of the duplex, flopping down on the saggy brown couch her roommate got while dumpster diving and flicking on the television for white noise. She drifts off to sleep to the sound of Channel Five News’ story about a sixth victim claimed by ‘spontaneous human combustion’ in the past month. 

High above, the star still twinkles. 

Candice sleeps in on Saturday. By the time she finally drags herself off the couch and changes into real clothes, her roommate, Karen, has put together breakfast. She slides the bowl of rice and natto across the table with a smile and asks slyly, “How’s Scott doing?”

“Senator Cahill is doing just fine,” Candice says sardonically. Karen doesn’t ask more, which is one of the reasons Candice likes her. 

They eat in silence for a while, listening to the radio. There’s a human interest piece about a strange blinking star in the sky, explained away with some technobabble-filled memo from NASA. Karen frowns. “I can’t believe they’re talking about a star when we’ve got people bursting into flame every other day. American priorities.” She goes to change the station.

“Leave it,” Candice says without quite knowing why. 

Night comes back around. Candice finds herself laying on her back on the picnic table, her eyes focused on the spot underneath Sirius. She waits for twenty minutes after the sun goes down, and is about to give up and sleep in her actual bed tonight when she sees it.

There’s something about the blinking. It’s uneven in a familiar way. She tries to recallwhat NASA said about it on the radio- temporal distortion caused by sunspots or something like that- and without realizing it she starts tapping the pattern out on her thigh. Short-short-short-short, short, double short-long-short-short, long-long-long. Space. Short-short-short, short-long-long, short, short, long, short-short, short. 

Candice’s father was a United States Marine for twenty years before retiring, and he taught his daughter well. Her pulse races as she translates the Morse code. ‘Hello Sweetie.’

She runs inside, grabs a flashlight, and repositions herself on the table. Trying not to feel like an idiot, she flashes into the sky, ‘Hi.’ 

The loop of ‘Hello Sweetie’ stops. As Candice watches, heart in her throat, the star replies back, ‘I doctor who you?’

‘Candice.’

‘Good name to save world.’

Things go off the rails from there.

Candice knows this isn’t rational. She knows she’s probably going crazy, just like her sister, just like her mother. A little voice in her head helpfully tells her that she’s most likely having a nervous breakdown due to the stress of having an affair with her boss. She keeps messaging the doctor anyway.

Three more people burst into flames in Washington DC during the week they communicate. The doctor, through Morse code, explains to Candice that it’s not really spontaneous human combustion, it’s aliens. They call themselves the Fire-Tasters, feeding and getting high off of the burning of sentient life, and when they’ve amassed enough power they’ll burn every human in the city. The doctor would help, but the Fire-Tasters have surrounded the planet with a force field that blocks the doctor’s ship. That’s why they need Candice’s help. 

That’s why Candice is currently sneaking into the back of a club, pepper spray in hand.

She convinced Scott to take her here. It’s a new place that popped up shortly before the fires started and is a bit more public than he likes, a bit more high risk, but Candice can be very convincing, she reflects as she massages her sore jaw. She’s in the same red dress she was the first time she saw her star. She slips away from him to ‘go to the bathroom’ and creeps into the staff only entrance.

There’s not much to see except stock for the bar, extra velvet ropes, and glitter that has somehow reached the ceiling. She hasn’t even seen a single employee yet. “Aliens running a nightclub,” she mutters to herself, ducking behind a crate of booze. “I am losing my… mind…”

She trails off as she sees the bouncer from out front walk by while unzipping his skin, revealing underneath it a see-through, glasslike creature with golden veins. He- it- makes its way over to a little black pillar covered in bright red buttons. It pulls a remote control out of who-knows-where and activates a little holographic image of the Earth with a barrier around it. It grunts in satisfaction, sounding oddly musical as it does, before switching the hologram off and zipping back up.

Candice waits until the coast is clear to make her way over to what she hopes is the force field generator. She looks over it, eyes wide, and finds a little panel. She slides the cover off to reveal a little glass tube flickering with golden energy; it looks like a miniature version of the Fire-Taster. There’s a plus on one end and a minus on the other, like for Earth batteries. She shrugs and pulls it out. A little holographic timer pops up where the globe was. Twenty seconds. Nineteen. Eighteen.

Candice runs like hell, making it back to the dance floor just before it explodes.

Nobody dies, thank God. Candice lets them take her to the hospital with about a dozen others. She herself isn’t that much worse for wear, but she banged her head on the floor when the device exploded and somebody stepped on her right hand in the panic and broke her little finger. She’s lucky she’s a lefty. And that she’s not dead, but she’d rather not think about that.

She has a grand fantasy of Scott coming to her bedside and declaring his undying love to her, spurred to action by almost losing her. In actuality he slipped away once he knew she was okay but before emergency services arrived and went home to his wife and kids. He texts her for updates to make sure she’s okay, though, and it’s something. It’s enough. 

They want to keep her overnight for observation in case she has a concussion, so she can’t message the doctor. Hopefully they’ll be able to act before the Fire-Tasters can regroup; hopefully, Candice tacks on as she drifts off to sleep in the uncomfortable hospital bed, they’ll be proud of her. 

VWORP

VWORP

VWORP

Candice jolts awake. A wind fills her hospital room, making the sheets and curtains billow. She closes her eyes, and when she opens them again there’s a big blue box, almost like a phone booth, parked in the middle of the floor. The light on the top flickers on and off, blinking out short-short-short-short, short-short. ‘Hi.’

Candice slips out of the bed as quietly as she can, smoothing out her hospital gown, and approaches the box. She touches one of the doors gently, and recoils in surprise when it creaks open, revealing beaming light within. Stealing herself, Candice pushes inside.

It’s like walking inside of a giant disco ball. The room is spherical with a flat bottom, and the walls are silver and glittery, with little circular cutouts that shine white like pearls. On either side of the blue doors are metallic antler-like protrusions, one of which is being used to hold an enormously fluffy and impratically short faux fur coat. In the center of the room is a large circular console, white and silver, bedecked with strange controls and topped with a huge bell jar containing a polished orange crystal. 

“What do you think?” calls a British-accented woman’s voice. 

“It’s bigger on the inside, have you noticed?”

“Just a bit. Close the doors now, we don’t want a draft.” 

Candice reaches blindly behind her and yanked the doors shut with a bit too much force. She doesn’t want to take her eyes off the room. 

The woman walks out from behind the console, flashing a quick smile at Candice before turning to the controls. She looks to be in her late thirties and has long, dark hair, blunt bangs, a sharp birdlike nose, and green eyes that are just a little too large for her face. Her skin is ghostly pale. She’s dressed a bit like Candice’s mother from the 60s, in a royal purple turtleneck, a yellow-and-black plaid miniskirt, black tights, and sturdy hiking boots. Candice knows instinctively that this must be the doctor. 

“Doctor who?” Candice asks, trying to regain control of herself. Her heart pounds in her throat.

She laughs. “Just ‘The Doctor’. And this, Candice Yamada, is the TARDIS.”

She flicks a switch and the orange crystal in the bell jar begins to spin and pulse with light, which reflects off the walls and turns the whole room into a beautiful chaos. The floor beneath Candice’s feet shakes and she hears that strange noise again- vworp vworp vworp.

When the TARDIS settles, the Doctor quickly walks over to Candice. She grabs the fur coat off its hook and slips it on, then takes Candice’s hand.

“And _this_ , Candice Yamada,” she says, pulling them out the doors, “is the White House.”

Candice gasps as they step onto the plush carpeting. The red glow of sunrise, which shouldn’t be for a few more hours, streams through the bulletproof windows. “I’m in the White House.”

“Yes, you are,” the Doctor says, still tugging her along. She pulls a silver tube with black fins on the side and a glowing blue tip out of her coat pocket, clicking a button on the side to make it start bleeping. “I’ve tracked the Fire-Taster headquarters to this location. It makes sense in a way, it’s the last place you would look because it’s a stupid idea.”

They take a sharp right, neatly avoiding a Secret Service agent looking the other way.

“I’m in the White House in my hospital gown,” Candice reiterates.

“Yes, you are. Sorry I sprung it on you, but they moved up their time table after the explosion. Sorry about that by the way.”

They take a left. The Doctor keeps fiddling with her strange device, whose bleeps get more pleasing to the ear the further they run. Candice assumes they’re getting close to whatever she’s tracking. 

“I am in the White House without pants on,” Candice informs the Doctor a bit hysterically.

“So was every First Lady before Eleanor Roosevelt,” the Doctor says, unconcerned.

Candice bursts into incredulous giggles and runs faster. 

Finally, the Doctor guides them through a door- a door Candice’s eyes almost wanted to slide over, as if it wasn’t even there- and locks the deadbolt behind them. The room is full of more golden glasslike technology like in the club; on a rack in the corner hangs more human suits. There are no Fire-Tasters, though. 

“What do you need me to do?”

The Doctor leads her over to a switch. “Pull on zero.” She hurries over to another one on the other side of the room. “3, 2, 1, 0.”

Candice pulls.

For a long moment, nothing happens. 

“…did we do it?”

The glass shatters under her hands. A scream echoes through the White House, and a wave of golden heat jets upwards into the sky before disappearing. 

“We did it.” The Doctor give Candice a small smile, looking her up and down with those big green eyes. “Together.”

“Thank you,” Candice tells her, because she supposes that’s what you should do when someone saves your city and lets you help. 

“You run very fast,” the Doctor says, still staring at her. 

Candice is considering how to answer that when someone kicks the door in, the deadbolt shattering. There are a lot of men pointing guns at them.

The Doctor steps in between them and Candice, pulling something else from her deep coat pockets. “I have a totally brilliant reason why you should not shoot us right now,” she says confidently, flipping open a little leather wallet thing to reveal a piece of paper. 

“Madam Ambassador?” The head of the agents motions for the others to lower their weapons. Candice lets out a sigh of relief.

“Candice?”

The sigh of relief clogs in Candice’s throat. Scott Cahill pushes through the agents to the front of the throng. 

“Uh. Hi,” she says lamely, acutely aware that this is the first time he’s ever seen her without makeup. All that waking up early after they had sex to fix her lipstick, coming to nothing. She’d forgotten about his early morning meeting.

“So sorry for any confusion, Senator,” the Doctor says charmingly. “I’m afraid I had to borrow your intern for a bit. Everything’s all worked out now, though. Excuse us.” She takes Candice’s hand and starts pushing her way through the mass of Secret Service blocking the door. 

Candice meets Scott’s eyes, and out of all the things she wants to say- I’m glad you're alive and I wish you had stayed and I love you- she settles for, “I’ll tell you everything on Monday.”

The Doctor drops her off in her bedroom. The TARDIS is sandwiched between her desk and her nightstand, and her sheets have been rumpled from the air displacement. 

Candice laughs and steps out of the disco ball, back into the ‘real world.’ “Seriously, Doctor. Thank you for everything.”

“Thank you for answering,” she says.

“I’m glad I did.” Candice chews her lip. “Where will you go next?”

“Anywhere I want.” The Doctor pats the TARDIS affectionately. “Time and relative dimensions in space, that’s what the name means. Everywhere and everywhen at my fingertips.” She pauses, considering. “Do you wanna come along?”

Candice’s face breaks out in a Cheshire Cat grin. “Maybe. Can you get me back by Monday?”

“Whenever you’re ready for it.”

Candice nods. “I’ll get packing.”

As she’s in the bathroom stuffing a toothbrush and tampons into her carryon bag, the Doctor calls from her bedroom, “Where do you want to go first?”

Candice barely even has to think about it. “Mermaids.”

”Oh, groovy! Mermaids it is.”

Candice slaps a note for Karen onto the kitchen table and practically flies into the TARDIS. The Doctor snaps her fingers and the doors close behind her.

VWORP

VWORP

VWORP 

**Author's Note:**

> (Yes, I cribbed the name and concept of the Fire-Tasters from the Host; I have no regrets)


End file.
